Journalistic Bias

March 26, 1986

IN THE March 16 issue you ran an Associated Press article headlined ''Church rebel in hot water with Vatican.'' Whoever wrote the article clearly sides with the church rebel, the Rev. Charles Curran, and the comments about the rebel range from laudatory to sympathetic. I would prefer the author had offered up a little less enthusiasm for the rebel priest and a little more insight into the controversy about the church's teaching on sexual matters.

It is not proper to let one's personal preferences leak into stories -- yet the writer did. The fact that the writer admires the rebel's views is tolerable, but the author's treatment of the rebel theologian's opponent, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, reflects an outrageous bias. This is how the writer describes him, ''Cardinal Ratzinger, head of a Vatican agancy descended from the Inquisition.''

Not being a Catholic, I'm unfamiliar with the staff agencies in the Vatican, but one would imagine that Ratzinger's duties extend beyond racks and thumbscrews. Nor does one have to be Catholic to recognize the petty innuendo and name-calling employed by the AP writer.

More to the point, are Sentinel editors in the habit of unquestioningly printing ''news'' stories from agencies that peddle such transparent bias?